


What are you doing New Year's Eve?

by EponineTheStrange (gallifreyandglowclouds)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 09:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1118214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyandglowclouds/pseuds/EponineTheStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis, well, he’s never been a fan of Christmas, and this year has thus far been no exception. It’s probably good that his holidays take a turn for the better on New Year’s Eve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What are you doing New Year's Eve?

**Author's Note:**

> Bit late for a holiday fic but here! It's cute and hopefully that will distract us from Hendall. 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at mywintersongtoyou.tumblr.com.

Louis has really never been one to believe in Christmas miracles. This has been a thing that’s gone on since that very first Christmas where he remembers distinctly when his dad left, and his was just him and mum that first Christmas and the house was lonely and cold, and he remembers wishing and wishing that daddy would come back but he woke up on Christmas morning disappointed. Since then he’s never really been able to get into the Christmas spirit, though he tries to at least fake it for the sake of his little sisters, because otherwise Lottie gets them all to call him Scrooge and that grates on his nerves. Christmas for him just brings disappointment that doesn’t quite mesh with the festive atmosphere.

This year is not proving to be an exception.

“Lou,” Eleanor says, sitting on the bench-swing-thing in his mum’s backyard and taking a drag on her cigarette (she only ever smokes when she’s stressed, and exams are as good a reason to be stressing as ever, he figures), “I just feel like I should be say more than ‘it’s been kind of fun’ for a two year relationship.”

“Hmmm?” he replies. To be honest, he completely zones out whenever Eleanor starts talking about  _them_. At this point, he can’t bring himself to care enough. He tries to pretend though, because that might make things easier.

“I just,” she says, sighs, and takes another drag, “listen, I like you. I think you like me too. But there aren’t fireworks.”

“I don’t think you’d usually want those around, El, you’re liable to lose a limb if you get too close –“

She gives him this deadly serious look and any instinct within him that might lead him to make a joke dies immediately.

“That’s not what I mean, and you know that.”

“Yeah,” Louis sighs. “I get you.”

“I guess,” she says, stubbing out her cigarette, “I don’t know how to put this in a way that’s not going to make you sad, Louis, but this isn’t working.”

“What isn’t working?”

“Us.”

“El, things are going to be hard for now because of stuff with the band, but it won’t always be this way –“ He starts off on that explanation, but she’s shaking her head and she’s right to do so – they’ve had this conversation in infinite permutations since the beginning of the year, and nothing’s going to change.

She’s right. Things aren’t working.

“Lou, they will,” Eleanor says, looking him and sighing. “Or maybe it won’t be, but I’m not going to wait around for it to get easier.” She drops the cigarette on the grass and crushes it out with her foot, and he reminds himself to go pick it up later lest mum yell at him for it.

“It’s not worth it,” he replies, looking down at the grass, and he’s not sure whether he’s speaking for himself or finishing her sentence at this point.

“Your heart hasn’t been in it for a long time,” she says. “I honestly think that this is for the best, Lou.”

“I – yeah, it probably is,” he says, and he can’t bring himself to look at her, and massages his temples. “I just never thought I’d get dumped a week before Christmas.”

“It could happen to anyone,” she says. “You’ll be able to celebrate with the girls. Give Harry a call. You’ll figure something out, Lou.”

“Thanks.” It comes out more caustic than he intended, but Eleanor lets it slide, which is good of her.

“I, uh, I better go,” she says, slipping off the swing and standing up. “I should probably be revising.”

“Good idea,” Louis says, and it’s nice that she discovered some kind of an excuse to go because he probably would have asked her to leave in a few minutes. (He’s done the breakup thing before, and there’s no sense in hanging around after the deed’s been done because things get awkward, and occasionally thrown around. It never ends well.)

He follows her through the back door and inside, where his mum is making tea in the kitchen.

“Eleanor!” Jay says, putting a lid on a saucepan of something bubbling and quickly turning the heat down on another, where broccoli is about to spill over the sides. “Would you like to stay for tea?”

“No,” Eleanor replies, polite as ever, “I’d best be getting home. Exams and stuff.”

Jay looks up at Louis, who at that moment realises he’s been staring at the floor with a rather baleful expression on his face, and he can tell that she knows without actually knowing, because Jay’s got some kind of fierce parental ESP.

“Well, that’s fine then,” Jay says, smiling a little sadly at Eleanor. “Good luck with your revision.”

“Thanks, Jay.” Eleanor walks through the kitchen, stepping around a sudden tide of Tomlinson girls rushing in the opposite direction.

He follows Eleanor outside. “All the best, eh?”

She nods at him. “You too, Louis.”

She gets inside her car and drives away. Louis waves as he pulls out of the driveway. As he stands and stares down the road, Jay appears beside him.

“She’s not coming back, I suppose?” She asks, arms folded across her chest.

Louis shakes his head.

“Shame,” Jay says, eyes focussed straight ahead. “She was always such a nice girl.”

“Things happen,” Louis says with a shrug, and digs his hands inside the pockets of his jacket.

“You don’t seem too broken up.”

“I think it had run its course.”

“Louis, you know that I think that Eleanor is lovely,” Jay says, staring out at the street with her arms crossed, “but things had run their course six months into your relationship.”

Louis tries to say something, but can only stand there with a look of utter bafflement on his face. Jay, for her part, seems totally unfazed.

“Come on inside,” she says. “It’s starting to rain, and I need some help with tea.”

“Sounds good, mum,” he says, and follows Jay inside.

* * *

He thinks a lot about what his mum said to him about him, and a lot about what Eleanor said to him. They’re both right – Eleanor is pretty and nice in the same way that all girls are kind of generically pretty and nice, but there’s nothing that made her special to Louis and kind of motivated him to make the same grand gestures that Liam makes for Sophia.

There’s going to be an absolute tabloid shitstorm when the media catches wind of this.  _Merry Christmas to me, eh?_ He never thought he’d ever be the kind of person that people would obsessively care about, but then again he never thought he’d ever be in a boyband, so really the last three and a bit years have been entirely uncalled for, if he thinks about it.

Later that evening, when Mum and the girls are all asleep and he’s lying in bed staring up at the ceiling, he instinctively punches Harry’s number into his phone, because Harry’s the person that he always calls when he and El fight, and if he can’t provide useful advice, Harry is usually good for a couple of shitty jokes that Louis will inevitably laugh at anyways.

He’s fully about to hit the call button on his phone, and then remembers that Harry’s cooped up in a cutesy London hotel with Kendall.

Is that jealousy he’s feeling? Oh no. No, no, no. This was supposed to have been all over and done with two years ago when  _he went and got a girlfriend._

(To be fair, Eleanor is now out of the picture, so maybe it’s only logical that the feelings for Harry are coming back. There’s also a distinct possibility that they never actually went away in the first place, so there’s that too.)

Yeah, it’s definitely jealousy. Who even introduced the two of them in the first place? How the hell did Harry, the oldest of old souls (and paradoxically, one of the most child-like people that Louis knows) end up with some vapid some reality TV star? Fuck. This is all far too much for Louis to handle. He grabs his pillow and screams into it. Melodramatic, it certainly is, but in a weird kind of way, it helps.

* * *

Louis deals with the burgeoning of his feelings for Harry to 2011 levels about as well as could possibly be expected, which essentially makes him into a broody nightmare. His mum comes within inches of kicking him out of the house and making him spend Christmas alone at his place in London, which he instinctively reels at but then realises that it might not be such a bad idea.

So that is how he finds himself alone on Christmas Eve, sitting on his couch watching old Doctor Who Christmas specials. He’s also got a bottle of Jack Daniels sitting beside him on the couch, and about half of it has disappeared in the past couple hours. So he’s alone on Christmas Eve,shitfaced, watching television of dubious quality, and pining over his best friend. Things are really looking up in Louis Tomlinson-land.

His phone rings, and through the drunken fog of his mind he thinks that it might be Harry. He smiles stupidly, stands up and walks over to his phone, and manages to only walk into one piece of furniture in the process. Victory.

It’s not Harry. It’s his mum.

“Hey, mum,” he says, slurring slightly.

“Oh dear,” Jay says. “I didn’t think you’d be in this sorry a state, Louis.”

“I’m enjoying the company of David Tennant,” Louis says, leaning against the wall and looking up at the ceiling in desperation. “I’m not in a sorry state.”

“How much have you had to drink?”

“Enough.”

“Sounds like it.”

He sighs. “How are the girls?”

“Fine,” Jay says. “It’s nice. It’s even snowed a bit up here, which always makes things magical. They miss you, though.”

“ ‘m sorry,” Louis says, running his hands through his hair. “I’m – I’m just in a weird place right now, mum. It will get better soon, I promise.”

“Have you thought about calling him?” Jay says gently. “I think if you talk to him, it might be easier.”

“No,” Louis groans. “I can’t, mum.”

“That’s the only way you’re going to solve anything, dear,” Jay gently chides. “It’ll only get worse if you don’t do anything about it. Promise me you’ll talk to Harry before you guys go on tour?”

Unrequited romantic feelings in a cramped tour bus? What could possibly go wrong there?

“I will, mum,” he says. “I promise. Merry Christmas, eh?”

“Thanks love,” Jay says. “I’ll tell the girls. Enjoy Doctor Who.”

“I will,” he says. “Bye mum.” He hangs up, makes his way back over to the couch, and takes another pull on the Jack Daniels.

It is at this point that he gets an idea that is as terrible as it is great. He grabs his phone and smiles at it.

“I’m going to do something really stupid,” he says, enunciating carefully as Donna Noble jumps from a taxicab into the TARDIS. “I’m gonna call Harry.”

His phone does nothing, and the one remaining rational part of Louis’ brain wishes that there was some kind of an app that would prevent you from doing stupid stuff like that.

He dials Harry’s cell number, and it goes straight to voicemail. He doesn’t know whether this is better or worse than having to actually talk to him.

“Hey, Haz. It’s uh, it’s Lou. Boobear? Yeah, that guy.” He laughs a little to himself. “ ’m sorry, I don’t know what’s so funny. It’s just – it’s weird that we haven’t talked in so long, eh? I miss you Hazza.  I mean, you’ve got Kendall, and right now you’re probably having a smashing time in Holmes Chapel with your mum and Gemma and whoever else comes to yours on Christmas. Also,” and he takes a deep breath, “ ‘m a bit – bit smashed at the moment. Actually, I’ve made my way through half a bottle of Jack and – ‘s not good, Hazza. I’m alone at the mo, actually, because I’m not up at mum’s for Christmas, and El’s – El’s gone, she didn’t’ want this thing anymore, and now it’s just me in this big empty house in London. Don’t be ever be alone on Christmas, Haz. It’s terribly depressing.” He pauses. The hard part comes next.

“Listen Haz,” Louis says, licking his lips and letting his head drop back on the couch, “I’m really hung up on you. Like, seriously hung up on you. And it’s been this way since like, the judges’ house, and I thought being with El might – help? Change things? But it hasn’t, and mum told me that I was a broody mess but I couldn’t not be a broody mess  _because I’m so fucking in love with you_  so I came down London instead, and that’s why I’m leaving you a drunken voicemail right now. I, uh, crap. Don’t know how to end this one. Merry Christmas Haz. Hope my phone hasn’t been hacked or something, or this will be all over the internet tomorrow morning.”

The hand holding his phone drops into his lap, and he hangs up. He stares up at his ceiling for a little while, and then the rational part of him makes one last gasp for life.

He sends Harry a text.  _Hjz , just left u j drunken voicemjil. Don’t listen. Plejse._(See, he know he’s really smashed because whenever he’s drunk, he hits the ‘j’ key instead of the ‘a’ key on the keyboard on his phone.)

He falls asleep on the couch as Clara falls off the cloud up in the sky.

* * *

When Louis wakes up the next morning, he has the worst hangover he’s had in years, and spends the better part of the day watching Christmas specials and wondering whether death would be preferable to the headache he’s currently experiencing. He doesn’t think about Harry (much), which definitely lightens his mood enough that on Boxing Day, he gets in his car and drives back home. His mum is happy to see him, and they spend a quiet day in together, because the girls are with Mark.

Harry actually tweets once, which surprises Louis, because apparently his mum has a strict no-phones policy when family is over.

To her great credit, she doesn’t mention Harry until they’re eating leftover Christmas food in front of the TV for tea.

“I left him a voicemail,” Louis says. “He was probably partying. His mum always has tons of people ‘round for Christmas.”

“Ah,” Jay says, smushing her mashed potatoes in gravy. “You didn’t call him on Tuesday, did you?”

“No, god no,” Louis says, smiling. “I would never do something stupid like that.”

His mum raises an eyebrow at him.

“Seriously,” Louis says, and his skin starts to crawl like it does every time he lies to his mother.

His mother has now become the lastest person who won’t call him on his crap (and he needs there to be fewer, rather than more people in the world who do call him out on his bullshit), and so she just nods and goes back to her mashed potatoes.

For his part, Louis just pretends to be really interested in  _Call the Midwife._

* * *

He goes back down to London for New Years, because Zayn’s having some big crazy party, and he feels like he needs to get lost in a room of people he doesn’t know. Everyone is pleasantly buzzed, and Niall’s brought Barbara with him, and she turns out to be lovely but a little dazed by all the attention.

“It gets better,” he says to her, taking a sip of his Diet Coke. (He has, after the Christmas Eve drunk-fest, stayed far away from anything remotely alcoholic. If anyone asks, though, he’s drinking Jack and Coke.) “Sorry, perhaps better is the wrong word. Easier. It gets easier.”

She nods at him, wide-eyed.

Liam catches up to him sometime around ten that evening, when Louis is kind of creepily lurking in Zayn and Perrie’s kitchen, conveniently removed from the chaos of the party.

“Is Harry coming along tonight?” Liam asks.

Louis shrugs. “I don’t know, but I doubt it. I think he’s going to have New Years in Los Angeles.”

“Right. Kendall.” Liam nods. “That would make sense. Be nicer there than it is here, I guess.”

The weather has decided to be characteristically British this evening, and it’s pouring outside. “Probably,” Louis says.

“Cool,” says Liam, who then disappears into the throng again.

“Kinda wish he was here,” Louis mutters to himself. Oh well. They’ll just have to sort everything out when Harry’s back, and Louis worries that there will be a great amount of sorting to be done, because he and Harry haven’t exchanged anything more than generic  _merry Christmas_ and  _hi how are you_ text messages in the past week. 

* * *

Things start to happen around 11:30. The crowd has thinned to just Zayn, Perrie, Barbara, Niall, Liam, and Sophia, and Louis has now moved his mopey self from the kitchen into the living room, sitting beside Liam and Sophia on the couch while they watch the countdown on TV. He feels bad for the people presenting on BBC One, because it cannot be pleasant to be outside.

“You think the fireworks will actually go off?” Sophia asks.

“Dunno,” Liam replies.

Louis absent-mindedly refreshes his Twitter feed, and as he’s scrolling through his timeline he nearly drops his phone.

“Everything okay?” Liam asks.

“Uh, Harry’s not in L.A.,” Louis says, showing Liam his phone. (So no, Liam, things are not okay.) There’s a tweet from twenty minutes ago, and for some reason Louis can’t fathom, Harry’s attached a location to it. He’s in fucking – Camden? What the hell is he doing in Camden? At least, Louis supposes, he won’t be there for much longer, because he imagines a herd of hystericalfangirls zeroing in on his location

_@Harry_Styles : maybe this year, love will appear, deeper than ever before_

“Huh,” Liam says. “Wonder if he’ll be coming here, then.”

“Maybe,” Louis replies, and all of a sudden his heart starts beating a tap-dance rhythm inside his chest.

Not thirty seconds later, the doorbell rings. Perrie goes to get it.

“Harry!” he hears her squeal from downstairs. “I didn’t think you’d be here tonight!”

“Oh fuck,” Louis mutters.

“Everything okay?” Liam asks, and then registers the shocked expression on Louis’ face. “Did something happen with you two in the last little while?”

“It’s a really long story –“ and certainly, it’s not one that Louis gets to finish or even start before Harry comes upstairs.

“Later,” he mouths to Liam, and then tries not to look like someone’s just died.

Niall and Zayn both jump up and hug Harry, and everyone kind of expressesgeneral surprise that he’s suddenly appeared because he’s supposed to be on the other side of the world.

Somewhat tellingly, Harry doesn’t actually offer an explanation as to why he’s here instead of Los Angeles, and Louis predicts this might cause problems in the future. Right now, he’s just this terrible combination of excited and happy and nervous, and his adrenaline is pumping so hard that his hands are actually shaking.

Harry sits down in a chair roughly across from where Louis is sitting, and Louis awkwardly waves at him. Harry awkwardly waves back.

Louis’ brain is on this weird loop of _fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckHarryfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck  _and suddenly, time slows down to a crawl, and the whole world kind of blurs and focuses around Harry. Niall has definitely realised that something is up, because he can just catch him out of the corner of his eye giving really worried looks to Liam.

After three or four minutes of feeling like he’s going to drown, Louis gets up.

“Zayn,” he asks, “the patio’s sheltered, right? I think I need a bit of fresh air.”

“Yeah, for sure,” Zayn says. “Stay warm.”

He bolts out of the living room and outside. The cold air doesn’t seem to bring him back to his senses in any meaningful way, so he just closes his eyes and leans against the cold glass of the sliding doors and tries to lower his heart rate enough that he’s not going to drop dead, or something.

The door slides open, and of course it’s Harry in his stupidly attractive button-down shirt that he’s conveniently forgotten to button the three top buttons on.

“I don’t want to make this awkward - ” Harry says.

“I think we’re well past that.”

“I listened to the voicemail,” Harry says, and looks over at Louis with something akin to fear in his eyes. “I saw the text first, Lou, and I knew that you’d been drinking and I was worried.”

“Haz, I’m so sorry,” Louis says. “I didn’t want to make things more complicated.”

“Well, little late for that,” Harry replies sharply.

“Well, fuck,” Louis says. “Now that everything’s blown to pieces, what do we do?”

Harry shrugs. “I’m sorry about Eleanor.”

“Bullshit.” Louis laughs in spite of the situation.

“Kind of,” Harry says. “It seemed like – like the thing you might say to someone in the situation.”

“You never liked her, Haz,” Louis says, staring out at the dark back garden and shaking his head.

“Well, it wasn’t because of anything particularly about her,” Harry says. “She – she kind of took my person away, and I think I resented that more than anything.”

“I’m your person?”

Harry nods. “I just – Louis, when I heard that voicemail it confirmed a lot of things that I’d always kind of known but was never really sure about.”

“Then why –“ Louis is kind of at a loss at this point. “Why didn’t you do anything?”

“You denied it, “Harry says. “A lot. And there was always this – this tension between what you’d do when we were together and what you would say and tweet and stuff, and I was confused, Louis! I didn’t want to risk wrecking whatever we did have, because you’re my best mate at the end of the day, and that’s important to me.”

“Christ, Harry, if I’d known,” Louis says. “I’d – I’d have tried to make everything different. I am so, so, sorry.”

“It is what it is, Tommo,” Harry says, smiling softly and turning to face Louis. “You can’t change what’s happened.”

“No,” he says, and right now, he’s pretty sure he’s got this ridiculous grin on his face, because somehow out of the ashes of a pretty terribly situation, he’s discovered that Harry loves him right back, which has redeemed 2013 as a year for him, and there’s only like, fifteen minutes of it left. “But from now on – no secrets, okay?”

Harry nods, and wow he’s suddenly really close to Louis, but Louis really likes that. He’s never been the shorter one in a relationship before, surprisingly, but he thinks that he might enjoy that from now on. “See, Irealised that I’d rather have my New Year’s kiss with you.”

“So that’s why you’re not in Los Angeles right now.”

“Yup.”

“What did you say to Kendall?”

“Didn’t really explain,” he says, casually. “I just told her that I wasn’t going to be there.”

“She’ll be pissed.”

“Louis, I really don’t care.”

If it is possible, Louis smiles even bigger than he already was. “Good.”

What happens next happens completely naturally, because it’s obviously a good idea for Louis to sling his arms around Harry’s shoulders, and for Harry to lean down and wrap his hands around Louis’ waist. And the leaning in – the sort of slowness of it all, how it gives Louis time to wonder whether Harry’s lips are in fact as soft as they have always seemed – is glorious and everything is serious and quiet and fairly romantic until they accidentally bump noses and Louis has to stop and laugh a little bit. Harry groans quietly.

“First kiss, Haz,” he says, forehead resting against Harry’s. “It’s not going to be perfect.”

“Well,” Harry mumbles, “best if we try again, do you think?”

Louis nods, and it’s like angels are singing in his ears when he finally gets his lips on Harry’s (and no, all of his imaginings are definitely not disappointed, as far as kissing Harry is concerned, because there is nothing about how his hair feels in Louis’ fingers or the way that he tastes or how bloody soft his skin is that could or just  _Harry_  that could disappoint Louis in the least.

They are interrupted by Niall rapping on the glass of the door, and pull apart with a shock.

“Oi, you two!” he yells. “There’s still five minutes left before you get to snogthe nearest person. And if you two think you’re going to get away with –“ he sort of waves his hands around, “ – doing things on the tour bus, you two have another thing coming.”

 Louis just leans into Harry’s shoulder and laughs.

“Come on inside, you guys,” Niall says. “Come do the countdown with us.”

Harry looks back at Louis, and he nods. Harry tentatively holds out his hand to Louis, who wraps his fingers in Harry’s. They follow Niall back to the living room hand in hand.

“Assembled ladies and gentlemen,” Niall says in his best officious announcer voice, “I give you the new first couple of boyband-dom.”

Harry’s cheeks flush scarlet, but Louis is still in laugh-at-everything mode so he’s not embarrassed in the least.

“Seriously?” Liam says, and remarkably, he’s the most surprised person in the room.

“He’s only mad because he now owes me fifteen quid,” Zayn says as Liam pulls his wallet out of his back pocket, shaking his head and muttering. “Come on you two, sit down. Countdown starts soon.”

They squeeze in together beside Liam and Sophia, and Harry casually putsan arm around Louis’ waist.

“They’re not freaking out quite as much as I thought they would,” Harry whispers in his ear.

“I think they all knew before we did, Haz,” Louis whispers back. “Or so it would seem.”

“Good with me.” He presses a kiss to Louis’ cheek.

(He kisses Harry again at midnight, and finally gets the feeling he can make up for all those missed New Year’s kisses.) 


End file.
